Road to Konoha
by WynterSky
Summary: After the events of Road to Ninja, Naruto gets a visitor from that world asking for his help.
1. Chapter 1

[A/N: So I just watched Road to Ninja, and then this happened. There might be another (much sillier) RtN-inspired fic later, too. Also, first time with Naruto's POV! This will be interesting.]

Naruto stared absently into his bowl of ramen, using his chopsticks to poke at the last lone noodle floating in the remnants of the broth. Ever since he'd arrived back from the alternate world Madara had shipped him off to in an attempt to acquire the Kyuubi, he hadn't had much of an appetite; this was only his eleventh bowl and already he'd had enough.

Sighing, he pushed the bowl away, paid for what he'd eaten, and headed back out into the street. While he had asked Sakura if she would come with him, she had already made plans to go out with her parents, so Naruto was by himself.

Naruto put his hands in his pockets, kicking at a can as he took a shortcut through an alley near his apartment building. _Even for just a little while, it was nice...parents, a family...but it's not so bad here, with Iruka and Sakura and everyone._

It was still a bit lonely, to open the door of an empty apartment. Naruto didn't get that far though, as he caught sight of a note that had been thrust under the door.

"What's this?" Naruto said curiously as he picked it up and unfolded it.

_Naruto:_

_Park. 9:00. Very urgent._

_~Hinata_

"Hinata-chan? Why would she want to meet me? Wait, what time is it now?"

Naruto didn't have a watch, so he opened the apartment just long enough to duck in and check the clock on the kitchen wall. It was already 8:45, so he locked the door again just as quickly and headed back down the stairs, looking the note over once more as he ran.

He'd always thought that Hinata would use a lot more words when writing a letter, but then he'd never received letters from anybody, really, so who was he to talk? The handwriting was hers, though, he remembered it from the Chuunin Exams when she had offered to let him copy off of her. Maybe this was just the way people wrote letters nowadays, or maybe she had been in such a rush that there hadn't been time to write more.

Naruto wasn't quite sure why Hinata would come to him if she was in trouble, but he wasn't about to let her down. Darting through alleys and over rooftops, he arrived at the park with a few minutes to spare.

Hinata was nowhere to be seen, so Naruto sat down on a bench to wait—she would probably turn up at exactly the time the note had said.

He didn't have to wait long before there was a soft rustle as someone jumped down from one of the trees near Naruto's bench.

Naruto jumped up and ran towards the sound. "What did you need—okay, you're not Hinata-chan," he cut himself off, pulling out a kunai and pointing it towards the newcomer. It was too dark under the shadows of the tree for him to see them clearly, but whoever it was was too tall to be Hinata, and their hair was too short. "Come out of there," Naruto ordered, backing onto the pathway running through the park and motioning for the other to follow. Once they were on the well-lit path, he would be able to see who he was up against.

"If you insist," the other said quietly, in a very familiar voice.

Naruto gasped, the kunai dropping with a metallic clatter onto the path. "_Sasuke?!_"

"Not quite," the other replied, stepping fully into the light. It only took Naruto a few seconds to recognize his former teammate's appearance from the alternate world. "Sorry to disappoint."

[A/N: I don't know how long this will be, but probably not terribly so. 15-20 shortish chapters, maybe?]


	2. Chapter 2

[A/N: FYI, I watched the movie in Japanese with no subtitles, so it's possible that I didn't catch certain details which could therefore be contradicted in this fic. If so, I hope you don't mind.]

2.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" Naruto asked in bewilderment. "Is this another plot of Madara's? What did you do with Hinata?"

"I came here to talk to you," the alternate Sasuke replied. "As for Madara, that's part of what I wanted to talk about. I didn't do anything with Hinata—I thought you would be more likely to answer a message if it looked like it came from her, since you are kind of 'together' and all," he said, using air quotes to emphasize the word.

"Um...together? You mean, like, _together_ together?" Naruto was pretty sure he wasn't sounding the most intelligent right now, and tried to compose himself a little. "We're not, actually. Not here."

"Oh, really?" Sasuke looked intrigued. "I'll have to drop by her place then...no, wait, I can't get distracted, not now. Is there somewhere we can talk without being disturbed?"

Naruto looked around the deserted park. "Well..."

"Somewhere _private_."

…...

"How long have you lived here, by the way?" Sasuke asked curiously when they arrived at Naruto's apartment.

"I've always lived here," Naruto explained, pushing Sasuke back as he opened the door. Iruka and Sakura had keys to the apartment, and Kakashi didn't need them. If any of them had decided to drop in, Naruto didn't want them to find Sasuke here. "Okay, all clear," he said after a moment's inspection of the entry. "Come on in."

Sasuke looked around the apartment in interest as he entered, stepping carefully around a pile of garbage bags that Naruto had forgotten to take out to the dumpster yesterday. "You're being awfully hospitable, I must say," he remarked as he sat down cautiously in one of the shaky chairs at the kitchen table.

"Really? We are old friends, after all, so..." Sasuke stared back at him blankly, and Naruto—reminding himself that this wasn't the Sasuke he knew—decided not to pursue that point just yet. "How long have you been here?" he asked instead.

"Since the day before yesterday," Sasuke replied. "Have you got anything to eat? I talked some girl into buying me lunch yesterday, but I haven't had anything since then."

"Sure," Naruto replied. "Is instant ramen okay?"

"I wasn't expecting you to have anything else," Sasuke replied.

In the process of making Sasuke's ramen, Naruto decided that he could do with some more as well. A few minutes later, the two of them were sitting across the kitchen table from each other with their food.

"So," Naruto began after slurping up a mouthful, "What did you want to talk about? And how did you get here? I thought the genjutsu ended when Sakura and I left."

"It was reality to us," Sasuke replied, blowing lightly on the ramen before taking a delicate bite. "And that's what I wanted to talk about. Can it wait though? I have something I need to show you and I don't want you spilling broth all over it."

After that, Naruto devoured his ramen in record time, and spent the next few minutes practically bouncing on his chair as he waited for Sasuke—who was eating much more neatly—to finish his. When he was finally done, Naruto whisked the empty cups away and gave the table a quick once-over with a tattered dish towel before sitting back down across from his former teammate's double. "Well?"

Sasuke sighed, tipping his chair back on two legs and looking up at Naruto's stained ceiling. "I don't know everything myself just yet, but I'll explain everything that happened since you turned up in my Konoha as well as I can. As far as I can tell, my world was created by Madara, solely to toy with you. I guess that would explain why you don't have any parents here, added temptation or whatever. Anyway, after you and your Sakura left and we got the real Menma and Sakura back, everything went back to normal. _Too_ normal, actually. No one was really interested in investigating where you came from or anything, they just went back to the way things had always been with them. I was the only one who noticed anything changing."

"Changing in what way?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke dropped the chair back and looked Naruto directly in the eyes. "My world is disappearing—I need you to help me save it."


	3. Chapter 3

[A/N: I've been thinking about getting a Tumblr recently, so I put a poll on my profile to that effect. Do vote!]

3.

"Disappearing?" Naruto repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Just that," the other Sasuke said. "I first noticed it a couple days after you left; there were less people in the streets, not as many girls coming after me. I mentioned it to some of the others, but they didn't seem to care. The next day, though, I got a package in the mail from Itachi."

"Itachi wrote to you?"

Sasuke quirked an eyebrow. "Is that so strange? We are siblings, after all, and he has been away for some time. Anyway, the package had a letter about some of the things he had observed, and this scroll." Sasuke pulled a scroll out of his pocket and set it on the table. "Itachi said that your presence seemed to have a significant effect on our world, and that he had discovered the one responsible—which would be Madara."

"But why is your world disappearing now?" Naruto asked.

"When Madara created it, I doubt he intended it to last very long," Sasuke said. "It's remarkably incomplete to anyone who cares to notice—I did some research after getting Itachi's letter. There's no history in my world; the newspaper archive only goes back five or six years, and no one I asked seemed to remember much of anything earlier than that, either."

Naruto frowned. "But my parents...I mean, Menma's parents...they had a album full of baby pictures."

"The only thing of its kind in the village," Sasuke stated. "My world was created to tempt you, remember? Of course everything surrounding you would be more detailed."

"And what about this scroll?" Naruto asked, reaching for it.

Sasuke pulled it back. "It's rather fragile, so please don't touch it. Here, I'll show you what it does."

Standing up, Sasuke slowly formed a few handseals, then began to unroll the scroll. The end of the scroll seemed to hang in space, then, as more was unrolled, floated up and over until their was an arch of paper created in the air. The area surrounded by the arch began to shimmer and tremble, and after a few seconds Naruto could see through it to a place that was definitely not his kitchen cabinets.

"The other Konoha," Naruto said as he realized what he was looking at. The streetscape looked like the Konoha he knew, but he could see the alternate Team 10 in the background.

"It's a doorway," Sasuke said, beginning to roll the scroll up again. The image of the other Konoha disappeared. "That's how I got here. It wasn't until I got to this Konoha that I realized how strange mine really was. I looked through the library—there are archives dating back almost a hundred years. There's nothing like that back where I come from."

"So what do you want to do?" Naruto asked. "You said you needed my help to save your world. How are you going to do it?"

"That's what I'm not sure of," Sasuke said. "This Konoha—yours, I mean—seems to be the original, the 'base world' if you will. My world is an offshoot, a 'splinter world' I guess. It's not very self-supporting now that its creator has abandoned it. I'm hoping that we can either discover some method here to bolster my world so that it can survive on its own, or failing that bring the remaining inhabitants here."

"How long do we have?"

Sasuke shrugged. "A month, maybe two. The longer we wait, the less people there will be to save, though. Let's start investigating in the morning, all right? I do still need my beauty sleep."

Naruto grabbed Sasuke's jacket as he turned and headed for the door. "Where are you going to go?"

Sasuke looked back, a surprised expression on his face. "I was going to go back to the park," he said. "That's where I've been the last two nights."

"What? No, that's no good," Naruto said quickly. "I've got a perfectly good couch—wait a second, I'll go find a pillow and some blankets. Just...stay there, okay?" Naruto wasn't about to let the other Sasuke out of his sight just yet—he still wasn't sure whether or not he was just dreaming the whole thing, and he didn't want Sasuke to just vanish into the night.

"Well, I'm not about to turn down an invitation like that," Sasuke replied, beginning to look more cheerful (and therefore even less like the Sasuke Naruto knew). "The sprinklers were rather a bother."

[A/N: This chapter was really talky, sorry. Things have to get explained at some point.]


	4. Chapter 4

[A/N: One more update for you before I go to bed...I really need to stop staying up so late...]

4.

Naruto didn't sleep very well that night; the strange happenings of that evening kept swirling through his head, making him restless. He wasn't sure what he could do to help save the other Konoha, but the alternate Sasuke seemed convinced he would be able to.

When Naruto finally gave up on sleeping and got up at around seven the next morning, Sasuke was still there, curled up on the livingroom couch and hugging the pillow Naruto had given him.

Naruto paused in the kitchen door to watch him. It had been really strange last night, to have his teammate's double there as if nothing had ever happened between them. Still, it was clear on close inspection that Naruto's Sasuke and the Sasuke from the other Konoha were different people. Now that he was sleeping, it was even more obvious—Naruto had never seen that peaceful an expression on his teammate's face.

_Okay, enough staring! _Naruto told himself._ What if he woke up? He'd think you were totally weird._

Sasuke woke up a short time later when the kettle of water for Naruto's morning ramen whistled as it began to boil. "Ramen for breakfast too, I see," he said, covering a yawn.

"Yup!" Naruto replied with a grin, setting two cups of instant ramen on the kitchen table. "After that we should get to work. What do you want to do first?"

"There weren't any books on seals or genjutsu in my world's library, so I want to try yours. I've already looked around a bit, but I think I need you along to explain things."

"Okay, sure," Naruto said as he poured the hot water over the dried noodles. "But I don't think we should be walking around the village with you looking like that."

Sasuke inspected the clothing he was wearing, looking confused. "What's wrong with this? There's no stains, and it's not indecent or anything..."

Naruto started to say something, then stopped—now might not be the best time to explain his and Sasuke's history. "It's just...well, Sasuke isn't around here right now, and it might attract a lot of attention if you turned up looking like him." Naruto was actually pretty surprised that no one had picked up on his visitor's presence in the two days he'd already been in Konoha, considering the fact that he basically had a sign on the back of his jacket saying 'Hello, I'm an Uchiha,' not to mention the necklace declaring the same. "You probably should take your jacket and necklace off," Naruto said. "I'll see if I've got a jacket or a hat or something for your hair."

"I'm not wearing anything orange," Sasuke said firmly, crossing his arms.

Naruto sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that..."

…...

Half an hour later, Naruto and his visitor were on their way to the Konoha Library. After a great deal of rummaging, Naruto had managed to find a red knitted hat that Iruka had given him for a birthday present last year—Iruka had said he could trade it in for an orange one once they were back in stock, but Naruto had never gotten around to it.

At first, Sasuke had complained about having to mess up his hair and refused to put the hat on, so Naruto had finally taken matters into his own hands, shoving the hat onto Sasuke's head and dragging him out into the street.

"You're so meeeean," Sasuke whined as they climbed the hill to the library, smoothing out the locks of hair that weren't covered by the hat.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" Naruto snapped. "Haven't you got more important things to think about than your stupid hair?"

"I suppose," Sasuke said, although he was still pouting a bit. "I'm not really used to that sort of thing yet."

"Which?" Naruto asked, confused. "The hat thing, or the world-disappearing thing?"

"The important-things-to-think-about thing," Sasuke answered.

That didn't do anything to relieve Naruto's confusion at all. "Yeah...I think you're going to have to explain that," he said.

Sasuke sighed. "Everyone in my Konoha is...very shallow. They don't think about things very much, they just go along happily in their little world like they were programmed to do when Madara created it. In fact, they're _so_ happy that they'll probably keep on like that until it all collapses around them. Anyway, I was like that too, until you turned up and everything started getting strange." He laughed nervously. "This is the most I've ever actually _thought_ about anything, really. It's all very new."

Remembering his time in the alternate Konoha, Naruto realized that his friends' doubles had seemed quite carefree, even if they had bickered among themselves quite a bit. "So they haven't realized anything's wrong yet?"

"No, and I doubt any of them will before everything ends," Sasuke replied. "That's why we have to do something."


	5. Chapter 5

[A/N: I think I'm beginning to get the hang of Naruto's POV. Tell me what you think of it, please!]

5.

Naruto and the other Sasuke arrived at the library without incident, to Naruto's relief. He had been worried they would run into someone who would recognize Sasuke. For now, Naruto wanted to keep Sasuke's presence secret; not only would that make things a bit easier on Sasuke himself, but also Naruto wasn't sure he would be allowed to help Sasuke if they were discovered. Tsunade would probably think this was another plot and lock Sasuke up or something, and Naruto couldn't let that happen.

Once they entered the library, though, things began to get tricky. Iruka was standing at the checkout desk chatting with one of the librarians—if he turned just a little bit, he was sure to see them, and even if he didn't recognize Sasuke right away he would if he came closer to talk to Naruto.

Sasuke didn't seem to realize there was a problem. "What's up?" he asked, not making any effort to keep his voice down.

"Ssshhh!" Naruto hissed. "This way, quick!" he said, darting across the open space to the first shelves.

"Is something wrong?" Sasuke asked more quietly as Naruto pushed him further behind the shelves.

"I just didn't want Iruka-sensei to see us," Naruto explained quickly. "Come on, the books we want are upstairs."

"Who's Iruka-sensei?" Sasuke asked as he followed Naruto up the stairs. He seemed to be having a little trouble with the brisk pace Naruto was climbing at, for Naruto could hear him breathing heavily. "Friend of yours?"

Naruto paused on a landing so Sasuke could catch up to him. "You don't know Iruka-sensei?"

Sasuke shook his head. "He must not have been around where I'm from."

Naruto hadn't even considered that possibility during his time in the alternate Konoha, although now that he thought back, he couldn't remember having seen Iruka around at all. At the time, he had just figured that he and Iruka weren't as close there, or that Iruka had been working late or something. It was sad to think that he didn't even exist in that world.

The upper floor of the library was deserted, to Naruto's relief. For the next half-hour or so, the two teenagers trawled through the shelves, stacking a table high with books to look through for any hints as to what they could do to save the other Konoha.

"I think we'd better stop now," Sasuke said finally, sitting down at the table and looking apprehensively up at the piles of books rising above his head. "We've got enough books to keep us busy for a _year_—what time does this library close?"

"Ten p.m., so we'd better get started now" Naruto replied, sitting down in the other chair and pushing one of the stacks aside a bit so he could see Sasuke better. Sasuke ducked as the pile wobbled dangerously, shielding his head with his arms. Grabbing a book off the top of one of the teetering piles, Naruto tossed it to Sasuke, then took one for himself.

…...

Naruto quickly discovered that the alternate Sasuke hadn't been kidding when he said he wasn't used to thinking very hard. While Naruto knew that he was easily distracted (this had been written on all his Academy report cards), Sasuke's attention span could only be described as impressively short. He could go from seriously discussing the fate of a universe to gushing over his favorite brand of hair gel in the space of half a minute—keeping him focused was rather a chore. Naruto found this a bit unnerving, since the Sasuke he was accustomed to didn't gush about _anything_, especially hair care products.

Besides all that, the fact that Sasuke kept requiring Naruto to refresh him on fairly basic principles of jutsu creation meant that they made pretty slow going. After two hours, they only had a few pages of notes for their trouble. Sasuke looked exhausted, and Naruto was sure he was developing a frazzled appearance to match.

"Okay, tell me again what the symbols on this array mean," Sasuke said, holding up the book he was reading and propping it on the table so Naruto could see the diagram.

Naruto sighed, squinting as he inspected the picture, which was all too small for the level of detail it was trying to show. "Um...this section is locational," he began, pointing out a section of the image. "And this bit, that's so the array doesn't fry the chakra pathways of whoever's standing on it."

"What about the part that looks like a bunny?"

Naruto leaned closer to the book. "What bunny?"

"Come on, Naruto, don't you even know what a bunny looks like? I mean _this_ part."

"I _really_ don't see how that's a bunny," Naruto grumbled.

"Shut up, it's totally a bunny!"

"Okay, okay, enough about bunnies," Naruto said quickly, realizing that if he didn't get Sasuke on another topic quickly they would probably be talking about cute furry animals for the next several minutes. "Anyway, shouldn't you know this? We all covered arrays in the Academy, and I know you always paid better attention than me in class."

Sasuke set the book down, and Naruto sat back in his chair as he realized how close their faces were. "That might be so here," Sasuke said. "But this is all fourth-year stuff, right?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Then no, I don't know it."

Naruto stared at him. "I don't get it."

"Naruto, I never graduated from the Academy. I was expelled in the third year."


	6. Chapter 6

6.

Naruto gaped at Sasuke for several seconds. "What? Expelled—you? How did you manage to get expelled from the Academy?"

Sasuke shrugged, pulling the hat off and running a hand through his hair, wrinkling his nose at the mess it was in now. "I let a girl copy my answers on a final exam in exchange for a kiss," he explained blandly. "Everything went fine, except she told on me. There was talk of letting me back in after that, but nothing ever happened—Mizuki probably had something to do with it, he never liked me. It was all very silly, actually. Itachi thought it was hilarious; he said I should be proud, since I'm the only Uchiha to ever get himself expelled. 'An impressive feat,' he called it. Anyhow, I don't really mind not being a ninja; it's way too much work and I don't really do the whole 'fighting' thing."

Naruto was finding himself becoming more and more curious about the alternate Itachi. While he had encountered the Akatsuki in the alternate world, he had been too busy at the time to really interact with them. Even though he had deemed the alternate Itachi trustworthy enough to protect Sakura, Naruto didn't really know anything else about him and it was clear that he was much different from the missing-nin Naruto remembered.

"Naruto?" Sasuke asked after they had both gone back to looking through their respective books for a few minutes.

"Yeah?" Naruto said, not looking up as he struggled through a particularly dense paragraph.

"This world's Sasuke—were you very close to him?"

"Um...you could put it that way, I guess. We were teammates, me and him and Sakura-chan."

"Really." The alternate Sasuke sounded thoughtful. "That could explain why I'm so different from him...Madara wouldn't have wanted me to have any undue influence on the plotline he'd set up for you. The less likely I was to associate with you, the smoother things would go for him."

"That makes sense," Naruto agreed. Even if he hadn't graduated, this Sasuke was pretty smart when he managed to focus—it was too bad he never became a shinobi. "Here, have a look at this bit," he said, pushing the book across the table to Sasuke and pointing at the paragraph he had been reading.

"So...many...words..." Sasuke breathed as he scanned the page. "My brain hurts," he groaned, laying across the table (and the book) and resting his head on his arms.

"Do you think some aspirin or something would help?" Naruto asked. "There's a vending machine right by the library, I can go get some."

"Couldn't hurt," Sasuke replied, his voice a bit muffled due to the fact that he was using a book as a pillow.

Naruto pushed his chair back and stood up, then paused, still not quite sure he wanted to leave the other Sasuke by himself. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said finally. "You stay right here, don't wander off."

"'kay," Sasuke mumbled as Naruto headed for the stairs.

…...

Iruka was gone when Naruto passed through the lobby on his way to the door, to his relief. He still didn't want to leave Sasuke alone too long, however, so he ran the block-and-a-half to the nearest vending machine kiosk.

The aspirin only cost five ryo, but the aged vending machine that carried them didn't register Naruto's first payment, even when he kicked it and threatened to Rasengan it all the way to the Hokage tower. Thankfully, the second payment was successful, and Naruto pocketed the packet of aspirin before heading back up towards the library. By that time, it had been more than ten minutes, long enough that the capricious alternate Sasuke could have gotten distracted again and forgotten Naruto's warning not to wander off.

Naruto sprinted all the way back to the library, and paused to catch his breath once he made it through the sliding doors. After a few moments of rest, he checked for Sasuke's chakra upstairs before he headed there himself.

The alternate Sasuke's chakra took a little work to find; it was different from that of this world's Sasuke, lighter and milder without as much rushing force behind it. It was still recognizable as Sasuke's though, and Naruto was almost going to relax before he realized that there was another chakra signature upstairs as well.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto gasped, running for the stairs. "What is he doing here?"

It only took Naruto about half a minute to climb the stairs to the second floor, but it felt like hours. He could hear scuffling sounds as he hurried through the rows of shelves to the far table where he and Sasuke had been sitting.

Kakashi-sensei doesn't know this Sasuke can't fight back! Naruto thought, ducking around a shelving ladder standing in his way. He'll really hurt him!

Finally, Naruto reached the reading area and could see what was going on with Kakashi and Sasuke. The two of them were standing behind the table, facing away from where Naruto was standing. Kakashi was holding Sasuke with one arm twisted painfully behind his back, and Sasuke was using his free hand to push away the kunai Kakashi had against his neck.

"Leave him alone, Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto shouted, running over to them.

"Naruto!" Sasuke gasped. He looked hurt and frightened, and Naruto couldn't blame him. "Why is your teacher attacking me? Make him stop!"

As soon as the alternate Sasuke started talking it was clear that he wasn't who Kakashi thought he was, but the jounin still didn't release him. "Naruto," Kakashi began in a dangerously quiet tone, "who is this person, and why is he disguised as Sasuke?"


	7. Chapter 7

[A/N: What would you guys think of my using the alternate Sasuke's POV at some future point?]

7.

Kakashi's question was a bit tricky to answer. Naruto knew he had to explain things quickly so the alternate Sasuke wouldn't get hurt, but at the same time he was having trouble thinking of an explanation that would really improve matters.

For now, he decided to focus on convincing Kakashi that the other Sasuke wasn't a threat. "He's not even a shinobi, sensei, let him go!"

Kakashi frowned (Naruto had figured out most of his expressions even if the mask covered them) and Naruto could tell that he was examining Sasuke's chakra. Finally the jounin relaxed and lowered the kunai he had been holding to Sasuke's throat. Letting go of Sasuke's arm, he gave him a little push away.

Sasuke staggered and Naruto hurried to support him. "Are you okay? What did he do?" he asked quickly.

"Dislocated shoulder, sprained wrist," Kakashi listed, pulling Sasuke away from Naruto and seating him ungently in his chair. "You: stay there," he ordered, then turned to Naruto. "And you: explain all this," Kakashi said, gesturing at the table strewn with books and the alternate Sasuke sitting in front of it.

"Okay..." Naruto began nervously. "So, you remember the one time a couple weeks ago where I was acting really strange and it turned out I had been in a genjutsu the night before where Konoha was all weird and everything?"

Kakashi nodded. "A bit, yes. You didn't tell anyone very much about it except that Madara was involved."

"Well anyway, it turns out it wasn't a genjutsu at all, but a real place, and my turning up there kind of...triggered an apocalypse?" Naruto turned to Sasuke for confirmation.

"That's basically it," Sasuke agreed.

"And so, this_ is_ Sasuke, but not our Sasuke, and he's not a ninja and he's actually pretty normal and nice and everything except that he has the attention span of a caffeinated goldfish—"

"Excuse you, I'm sitting right here," Sasuke cut in, looking indignant.

Naruto took that as a sign he was feeling better. "Sorry. Anyway, he's trying to find a way to keep his world from imploding now that I made it all screwy, and I'm trying to help him since I did kind of mess it up in the first place."

His explanation finished, Naruto tried to look as innocent and trustworthy as possible. Since he sometimes used this ploy while trying to wheedle people into buying him ramen, his 'innocent-and-trustworthy' face was pretty convincing. However, Kakashi had been the target of said wheedling before, so Naruto knew it wouldn't work as well on him.

Kakashi studied both Naruto and the alternate Sasuke for some time, then picked up their meager notes and read those over silently. "Well," he said finally, tossing the notes back down on the table, "for now it looks like you're not up to anything harmful, so I will let you keep on. However," he added firmly, "if I get the slightest hint that Madara might be involved in this, your new friend goes straight into Interrogation, am I clear?"

"Right, gotcha, very clear," Naruto replied quickly.

"And what about you?" Kakashi continued, turning to Sasuke.

Sasuke blinked. "Where around here do you think would be a good place for a koi pond?" he said.

"Come again?" Kakashi repeated blankly.

"So, it's clear he's not up to anything, so are we free to go now?" Naruto interrupted, cutting off Sasuke so they wouldn't end up talking about aquaculture for the rest of the afternoon.

"I suppose," Kakashi agreed, although he still sounded a bit suspicious. "I'll walk you to Sakura's place so she can patch him up." The jounin didn't apologize, which Naruto wasn't surprised at. He also didn't seem at all inclined to leave them alone, pulling Sasuke by his good arm and motioning for Naruto to walk ahead of them.

"Does it have to be Sakura?" Sasuke whined. _Nope, never going to get used to that,_ Naruto thought.

"Don't worry, she's not nearly as obsessed with you as she used to be," Kakashi said blithely as they descended the stairs.

"Um...Sakura? Obsessed? With me?" Sasuke was sounding more and more confused. "Are we talking about the same person?"

Kakashi was silent for several seconds. "Well," he said finally, "from the way you're talking, probably not."


End file.
